When You Need Strength

In church today, my minister, Judy Brain, spoke about the soldiers in the Abu Ghraib camp and why some did not find the courage to speak out against the ungodly treatment of the prisoners.

I thought of this hymn. We are so often -- much more often than we admit -- asked to do the right BUT UNPOPULAR thing. We are called to be courageous and truthful all the time in our work lives, our personal lives, in unusual times and seemingly unimportant places -- seeing a man drop a $20 bill out of his pocket in line at Burger King, he doesn't notice it, so it lies there, what do you do?

We need courage to act with love and godly goodness. When we see a wrong do we address it? Do we rise to the challenge?

Perhaps you don't believe in evil. Perhaps the devil and temptation seem too stagey, too phoney to be real in your world. I don't think so. I think there is a force of evil -- a place where light is sucked into darkness -- and we are called on to NAME it and right the wrong of its intention. It would have us all sucked into darkness, given half a chance.

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.